02/14/13-Hallmark Holidays

Ah yes, Valentine's Day or what some people might call Single-Peoples'-Awareness Day, lol.

It's a huge deal here in Salone! There's been this vendor that's been camping out in front of the school everyday selling a plethora of Valentine's garbage all to be resent back into the garbage within a matter of days. Even in America, I hated that cheesy Valentine's junk. The cards here are 10x worse here; it's like these over-the-top cheesy love letters written by some overly sensitive guy with a mullet in some Dockers listening to Richard Marx love ballads, lol. But apparently, everyone expects to receive these gift bags containing these "cards" along with a fake flower covered in glitter heavily doused in this cheap perfume, enough to make my nose bleed from a mile away.

I know, I know, I'm beings negative Nancy. I can't help it, it's just too cheesy. But ok, I'm guilty of capitalizing on this Hallmark generated holiday. I wanted to show the school that we can generate our own money through fundraising. I introduced the concept of candygrams where kids can purchase a valentine greeting with a lollipop and gets delivered to their schoolmates the next day. I sold it for a week and it took a day to catch on but when the girls realized that they get to bluff each morning on how much Valentine grams they received they started selling like crazy. I was selling them for 5-block (Le500) and I was able to raise Le168,000 profit off of stupid pieces of paper where I drew amateur kid drawings of "Valentine" thingies. With the money, we can now buy a new microphone cord for assembly and I've also asked the principal if we can purchase an extension outlet cord for the staff room (for teacher phone charging) and the balance money on whatever else we may need for the school. $40 USD may not sound alot but Le168k is and I wanted to prove a point to the staff that there are many ways to bring in money aside from just waiting for handouts and complaining how we have nothing. When in fact, we have tons of unused resources and people just don't want to put the effort into thinking of ideas.

Instead of having my usual Math lectures today, I decided to give my girls a gift of making Valentine's cards. Children here never get enough art time so sacrificing one day so I can teach kids to be more creative is worth it. Mind you, I have SS1 students with an age range of 14-21, so these aren't little kids. But seriously, it's back to basics where I have to slowly talk them through on how to just fold the paper in half to make it look like a card. The folding effort takes about a good 5-10min for them to comprehend how to do it and understand the concept of a card where the picture is in the front and the letter is on the inside and in most cases you open a card up as you would similar to a book. We're not even talking design yet, just logistics, lol. I don't blame them since books is something that a not too common in their lives. But I even showed someone's Valentne card and compared them side by side and STILL many of them were drawing on the inside and opening it backwards. Sierra Leonean children will always say they cannot draw so I made them call out Valentine things that they wanted me to draw so I can draw it on the board for them. Then, they proceeded to ask which order should they draw the pictures in and I swear I had to tell them 100 times that the card is for them and their Valentine, they can draw whatever the hell they want. I was just drawing what they asked me to draw on the board. But they drew everything in the same order I drew them. Oh Salone children!!!!! You can tell they are deprived from artwork and positive reinforcement b/c they are all ashamed of their artwork and once they see I praise them, they are so eager to show me. Again, I just want to reiterate that these are 14-21yr olds, different from my 10-12yr old JSS1 boarding home. Interesting how the reaction is the same. It's funny how I can't draw worth for shit but people treat me like Micael-Fucking-Angelo, lol. That's how it is here, the educational system does very little to develop the artistic and creative side of children. So now my doodles are works of art, lol. So be it.

I know it's been a while since I posted but I was just so turned off on how the blogger app just wiped out 2 really good and positive blog entries so I was all bitter about it. I'm back online now :)

Kushe

02/02/13-Palava With An App

I'm really pissed.......

I'm having a 1st world problem.....

The Blogger App for blogspot got updated and the newer version doesn't save offline posts and completely wiped them out.

They were 2 really good and really positive entries and I'm being pissy about them disappearing!

I've been bitter about this so I haven't posted anything for a while....

Whatevers.....

1st world problems >:(